Upper Guinean forests
(Redirected from
Upper Guinean forest
)
The Upper Guinean forests is a
In the drier interior, the Upper Guinean forests yield to the
Guinean forest-savanna mosaic, a belt of dry forests and savannas that lies between the coastal forests and the savannas and grasslands of the Sudan further north. The Dahomey Gap, a region of Togo and Benin where the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic extends to the Atlantic coast, separates the Upper Guinean forests from the Lower Guinean forests to the east, which extend from eastern Benin through Nigeria and south along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea.[2] The Upper Guinean forests are a Global 200 ecoregion.[3]
The Guinean moist forests are much affected by winds from the hot dry area to the north and the cool Atlantic currents. This gives the region a very seasonal climate with over 80 in (203 cm) of rain falling in some areas in the wet season. Over 2000 species of vascular plant have been recorded in the ecoregion, and mammals found here include the
spot-winged greenbul (Phyllastrephus leucolepis) are further restricted in distribution to the western forests only.[4]
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) listed the Upper Guinean forests (which it calls the Guinean moist forests) on its Global 200 Critical Regions for Conservation. [1]
The WWF divides the Upper Guinean forests into three ecoregions:
- The Western Guinean lowland forests, extending from Guinea and Sierra Leone through Liberia and southeastern Côte d'Ivoire, and as far as the Sassandra River.[1]
- The Eastern Guinean forests, extending east from the Sassandra River through Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana to western Togo, with a few isolated pockets further inland, in the highlands of central Togo and Benin.[1]
- The Guinean montane forests are found at higher elevations in the Guinea Highlands, which extend through central and southeastern Guinea, northern Sierra Leone, and eastern Côte d'Ivoire.[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f "Guinean moist forests". World Wide Fund for Nature. Archived from the original on 3 November 2016. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-85199-914-2.
- ^ Olson, D. M.; Dinerstein, E. (1998). "The Global 200: A representation approach to conserving the Earth's most biologically valuable ecoregions" (PDF). Conservation Biology. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ISSN 1474-0001.